


culpable of being dysfunctional

by yerimsus



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band), Winner (Band)
Genre: F/M, IM SORRY OK, im sorr, one of the two het ships i’d die for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 19:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12348768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerimsus/pseuds/yerimsus
Summary: jinwoo’s been coming home late. irene wonders why.





	culpable of being dysfunctional

**Author's Note:**

> i had to use all the accumulated stress from my personal life on writing so there you go: another very perfunctory and dysfunctional (as you will probably be able to tell) story from me which features a kpop het crackship (rip) 
> 
> you’ll see more of them from me i apologise in advance

i.

 

something is wrong.

from the glossiness of jinwoo’s eyes as he looks at her as if he’s seeing something she couldn’t quite see and the faint odor of smoke from his clothes whenever she sits down to wash their laundry.  
and at night, from the way he would just lay there and stare at the ceiling.

it’s a series of small patterned events that worries her.

 

ii.

 

jinwoo told irene he loved her yesterday for the first time after a long while with such clarity in his eyes. it first came in cradling her head under his chin, his breathing a staccato of an unsung song composed of perfunctory and useless phrases.  
irene could detect a faint odour of smoke coming from his leather jacket.

and now as she tries to remember the moment, she swears an indistinct smell of alcohol wafted from jinwoo’s breath as he mustered to say i love you without deliberately tripping on the words.

 

(she cried later that night.)

 

iii.

 

it wasn’t the first time it happened.

 

the second time it did, irene was woken to the sound of the doorknob jiggling as jinwoo vigorously inserted the wrong key. this had been going on for thirty minutes and more.

he fell on his way inside, pulling a groggy irene down towards him as he held her against his chest and whispered a multitude of i love you’s.

it’s always happened since then.

with irene waking up at 4 am to an agitated jinwoo and falling asleep against him as he proclaimed again and again how much he _had_ loved her.

it came to the point irene slept past 4 am, waiting for him to come home. hoping she’d hear at least a faint knock or any sound signifying jinwoo’s arrival.

 

but he never did that night.

 

 

iv.

 

nor did he that night.  
and that night.

and that night.

 

irene closed her eyes in defeat, weary of this cycle of toxicity.

but she never identified it as such because it doesn’t matter when you love the person right?

 

v.

 

jinwoo did on the thirty first of may, just after irene’s birthday to which she hoped he would appear and apologise for all the absences in her life.

it’s been the sixth month of him not coming home, and irene already having switched to her fourth phone after she had broken all the other ones, trying to get in contact to jinwoo who mysteriously disappeared without a second glance or any thought to what would happen to her.

she’s waited for this moment —

but jinwoo was surprisingly sober when he came home on that friday night, eleven quarter to twelve, as the clock ticked by, and irene held her breath as he inserted the right key into the keyhole.

she almost jumped on her seat.

he didn’t fall, neither did he trip, and the creases on his clothes made up for the lack of any narcotic stench in his breath.

he wafted of vanilla and menthol.

jinwoo only laid upon irene’s bed without bothering to take his coat off. at least to irene, this was normal.

nothing was said between them for hours. his hand only reached for her, fingers carefully threading with one another. a hope and an apology.

and also a desperate attempt to glue the shredded parts of their relationship.

his eyes were wonderfully and, mysteriously so, glossy that time, travelling from one end point of her features to another, memorising and trying to decipher the quiet codes etched into the wrinkles between her eyes and the upturned frown of her mouth.

“where have you been?” she was almost afraid to ask.

 

 

vi.

 

 

later that evening, only his sighs of relief, which almost — _almost_ — whiffed of irene’s most hated aroma of cinnamon, ever did give him away.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> https://youtu.be/b4UNnq48WMk


End file.
